A delegation from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has visited Ingushetia and judged the living conditions of internally displaced people and refugees as unsatisfactory.

On September 23, a delegation of the PACE visited Ingushetia. The delegation visited the temporary accommodation centers housing refugees from the Russian occupied Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, who have been living in the city of Karabulak, Ingushetia since the mid-1990s.

“The conditions facing the people who live in temporary accommodation centers are unsatisfactory, despite measures taken by your leadership. My mission was to personally interact with refugees and officials from the republic,” said Dendias Nikolaos, head of the delegation, at his meeting with Ingush Prime Minister Musa Chiliev, in the city of Magas after his visit. Greek MP Dendias Nikolaos, who is a member of PACE’s committee on migration, refugees and population, also asked about funding allocated for the resettlement of refugees and the measures taken for these purposes during the year.

Recall that Ingushetia hosted tens of thousands of refugees who fled the Russian occupied Chechen Republic of Ichkeria during the first and second Russian-Chechen wars as well as the ethnic Ingush, who were displaced after the Ossetian-Ingush conflict in neighboring North Ossetia in 1992. The number of refugees currently in the republic is estimated to be between 15,000 and 20,000, and many of these people still live in improvised refugee camps.

*Text was written by Waynakh Online and edited by Michael Capobianco